Have the media become the vice, rather than the voice, of the people? This is one of the many fascinating ideas posed by Christopher Browne in The Prying Game. Good title - seventeen spin-doctors huddled in a three-week brainstorming session could hardly have bettered such a sparkling play on words - and anyone about to catch a flight from Heathrow airport would probably snap the book up for sheer on-journey escapism. The actual content is equally compelling as it tells the story of the media from an insider's point-of-view - Browne is a national newspaper journalist - giving away many tricks the journalist uses to get a story - and the cunning hoaxers who play journalists at their own Prying Game with made-up stories about disappearing celebrities, naughty mistresses and political corruption. However, the hyperbolic high-jinks don't just stop at the title - check out the chapter headings: March of the Moguls, The Tory Story, Keep Taking the Tabloids, The techno-revolution, Media Wars, and, yes, that one again, The Vice of the People. Readers are left in little doubt about the book's content - perhaps not surprisingly for an author who has been a sub-editor on three UK national newspapers. As the sub-title implies "The sex, sleaze and scandals of Fleet Street and the media mafia", this is a potboiler, with the real story of how former Tory minister David Mellor was caught de flagrante by the UK's People newspaper; the House of Commons researcher who had affairs with two leading national newspaper editors, before revealing all to the News of the World; and the huge sums involved in chequebook journalism. And there are plenty of laughs between the tales of scandalous intrigue.